Not So Bad After All
by CaseyRachel88
Summary: Emily is leaving the BAU, and clears out her desk on a Saturday to avoid saying goodbye to the team… but will the team let her get away with it? My entry for the-vampire-act and hudson911's CM Ladies Contest.


Not So Bad After All

Summary: Emily is leaving the BAU, and clears out her desk on a Saturday to avoid saying goodbye to the team… but will the team let her get away with it? My entry for the-vampire-act and hudson911's CM Ladies Contest.

Rating: K+ – for a little bit of language.

Disclaimer: They're not mine, of course. Even Emperor Norton wasn't that crazy.

Any and all feedback is appreciated – feel free to point out any errors, tell me what does and doesn't work, etc. :-) I hope you enjoy!

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"_True goodbyes are the ones never said or explained."_

_- Anonymous_

It was Saturday at three pm when Emily Prentiss stepped into the bullpen area of the BAU headquarters.

The whole floor was quiet, although that really wasn't surprising. Several of the top ranking heads were away for a yearly staff meeting. The people who worked only Monday to Friday were off for the weekend. The other BAU teams were away on their own cases, and her team had returned from a rough case at 4 am that morning: Strauss had taken one look at the exhausted troupe via webcam and ordered them to take the remainder of the weekend off. They were all dead on their feet from three days without rest and had been more than willing to go home and leave the building bereft of their presence.

That emptiness was exactly why Emily was standing in the bullpen.

She knew the team would be pissed when they found out she had cleaned out her desk over the weekend to avoid saying goodbye, instead of waiting for Monday morning like she'd said. Her last official day had been yesterday, but a serial killer in Oregon had taken them away until early this morning. When everyone had arrived home, the last thing she wanted to do was to pack everything up. She'd asked, and Hotch had agreed, that she would come back Monday to get the job done. He'd jokingly offering to make Morgan and Reid carry everything out to her car, before genuinely offering his help if she needed or wanted it.

But coming in Monday morning would mean saying goodbye to the team in person, and that type of send-off was on Emily's "Avoid at All Cost" list.

She had briefly pondered simply leaving a goodbye letter for the team, rather than going through the "this isn't goodbye - it's a see you later, we'll keep in touch" ritual that always happened during face-to-face farewells. But any real desire to take that road was squashed: she remembered far too well how Gideon had taken that path a few years back. Reid had come in with downcast eyes, refusing to say anything except that he had found a goodbye letter in his mentor's cabin; everyone had been furious with the profiler for leaving that way, and Emily was certain deep down there was lingering resentment among those who had known Jason Gideon the longest.

Nope, the letter option was out.

Growing up, there had never been a place Emily lived for more than a few years at the most. Even in her career, she was constantly moving, changing, coming in and heading out in a few short years. There was no logical reason for the BAU to be different.

Her new job in Foreign Affairs would technically be located in New York, but she would be able to travel around the world, working the system of policies and politicians, with the hope of making life better for people who couldn't do it themselves. Foreign Affairs had been more than willing to take the daughter of an ambassador as their newest employee. One thing was for sure: Emily was absolutely certain she had not gotten the job based on her mother. Simply by using the experiences and knowledge gained from her upbringing, Foreign Affairs had recognized her potential and what she could offer. She'd been considering the move for a long while, but kept her mouth shut until an opening was available. There was no way in hell she'd allow_ anyone _the possibility of pulling strings to get her into that position, like what occured with Hotch's team. She hadn't known it at that time, and she had done more than enough to prove she deserved to work with the elite profilers, but it had been a hard lesson to learn. It had also been a lesson she'd vowed never to repeat.

She stepped to her desk and yanked open one of the drawers, pulling out the notepads that were there and tossing them in the cardboard box she had brought. Paper clips, staples, and office supplies joined the box until the bottom of the drawer could be seen. Sitting at her desk, Emily began working on the second drawer.

Packing things away, she decided she was glad to be moving on. She wouldn't miss this at all.

She wouldn't miss the long hours. She wouldn't miss the heartbreak that accompanied every case that didn't end with a rescue. She wouldn't miss seeing the horror that humanity could dump all over each other without remorse or excuse. She wouldn't miss going home to an empty apartment. She wouldn't miss this.

Suddenly, the air conditioner turned on automatically. The buzzing sound always seemed loudest right over her desk. _And I most certainly won't miss that!_

_Only, you will_, her mind whispered. _You're going to miss all of this just as much as you'll enjoy not doing it anymore._ She knew that while odd, that was true.

She would miss being the tangible hope every parent would cling to when their child went missing. She would miss the thrill of joy that came from saving a victim. She would miss going home to an empty apartment, knowing that every night spent alone ensured that lives were saved. She would miss this.

She began moving faster, in a hurry to be done. She went on to the final drawer, finding all the little things that had accumulated over the time at the BAU. Besides the normal odds and ends, she pulled out a Sudoku book, a troll doll Garcia had given her, some yarn from when she'd decided to try knitting after long cases – that phase had lasted about ten minutes – and the damn star puzzle that Reid had so quickly solved a while back.

_In reality, solving the cases won't be the only things I'm going to miss,_she thought reflectively. She would miss how Garcia and Morgan bickered and flirted back and forth; how Rossi and Hotch acted like the mom and dad of the team; how Reid would spew random facts out until one or all of them would roll their eyes good naturedly. She was going to miss the people . _Wh__en the hell did I get so sappy?_ Emily pondered with a hint of annoyance.

Compartmentalizing was one of her best skills. It always had been: she had never had a problem walking away from a group of people before. But this… this was different. The BAU team was just a group of people, or some colleagues. They were – as stupidly cliché as it sounded – a family.

And how was she supposed to compartmentalize family? They invaded more than just her work life: they celebrated and mourned together; they went for drinks after work and occasionally got together on weekends for movies and pizza; they roomed together on cases; they offered support and comfort and reassurance and all the God-damn things family was supposed to without any of them sharing blood. And frankly, when Hotch had been put in the hospital with Foyet's attack, she'd offered to donate blood. She knew for a fact that hers was not the first blood to be traded among the teammates when needed.

_Damn. _She'd thought she had worked hard to prevent this.

They would survive, of course. It wasn't like she was the first person to have ever left the team. Agent Greenaway, whom she had replaced, Gideon, and JJ had been part of the team and left. Jordan Todd had come and gone as well, although her stay had been admittedly brief. The team hadn't had a problem functioning then, and it would keep doing so without her. That didn't mean it was easier to say goodbye.

The top of her desk was almost entirely clear when she picked up the last object to go: the team photo they'd had taken the Christmas before JJ had left, in front of the very desk she was now cleaning out. It was the team as they were: herself, posed on the far left with a ridiculous smirk on her face. JJ standing beside her, with a smile was so bright it could give a blind man sunspots. Hotch was positioned beside the media liaison, relaxed and leaning back against the desk, dark eyes laughing at the team's antics. Garcia was dead center, striking a pose that was so vivacious, only she could have effectively pulled it off. Morgan was stationed beside her, head cocked slightly to the side and grin displayed in full force. Reid was half behind Morgan, half to his side, his expression a little surprised, almost as if he hadn't expected the picture to be snapped when it had. On the end stood Rossi, his arms crossed casually over his chest and giving the camera a "what can I do?" face, but even he wore a smile.

The whole team, the whole family, together for a picture. Emily closed her eyes for a moment, reassessing the situation. _Am I sure I really want to move on? Do I really want to leave this?_

But she knew that her answer now would be the same one she'd given Hotch a few weeks back when he'd asked her. It was the same answer she'd told Strauss right after Hotch. It was the same answer she'd given each team member when they had all individually, privately pulled her aside: she really did want this. Something new was on the horizon, and she couldn't wait to chase it.

_Change is good,_ she told herself firmly. Opening her eyes, she stood up from her chair, preparing to head out of the bullpen for the last time. She turned around to face the elevator for the final time…

… and found herself instead facing her team. They were all standing there, arms crossed and looking at her with something between annoyance and amusement. She couldn't help it when her mouth fell open just a little bit as she realized her concentration and the rattling air conditioner had blocked any sounds they might have made upon approaching. But how the hell had they figured out she was here?

As if she could read her mind, Garcia laughed. "You really should know better by now, Em. I had the keycard you use to enter the building set to automatically alert me when you step foot inside. We thought you might try and – well, sneak out." Seeing Emily raise her eyebrows, Garcia continued. "As soon as I got the alert, I checked the cameras and saw you get in the elevator, so I called everyone else. I think I pulled Reid out of a dead sleep. Took him almost a full thirty-three seconds before he quoted how long it takes for a person in the R.E.M. sleep cycle to fully wake up."

Spence rolled his eyes at the statement, but didn't contradict her, so Emily guessed it was probably close to the truth.

_Why, oh why, did I not expect profilers – reputably the best of the BAU – to realize I had no intention of sticking around for painful goodbyes?_

"So…are you all going to yell at me, or not?" The question blurted out of her mouth before she could stop it. Yelling was usually what she got from people when she suddenly dipped out of their lives without a proper goodbye.

"We can't yell at you, because we caught you before you could sneak off. Try it again and I might just fire you, though," Hotch deadpanned.

_Did Hotch just really make a joke? _Emily wondered. _Maybe it's good I'm leaving now. If Hotch is cracking jokes, the universe has probably been thrown off its orbit and is about to implode, _she thought wryly.

"He's right, Emily," Reid added in helpfully, "And if you ever try to sneak off again, statistically speaking, there are better days to do so. Take, for example, a Thursday. People are less likely to…" The genius trailed off at the looks of dismay on the faces of his teammates. "Uhh - I mean, don't do that again! You shouldn't have tried to sneak off without saying goodbye to us."

_Clearly the universe can't be too far off rotation if Reid knows statistics about the best days to sneak away and is more than willing to share that knowledge with his friend who was just trying to do that very thing…_ a genuine smile lit up her face as she started laughing.

After a brief moment of fighting it, everyone else joined her in laughing; even Hotch was shaking his head at their youngest agent in amusement. Reid merely shrugged at their good-natured ribbing. Any annoyance they might have felt was clearly now washed away. Morgan reached for the box on her now empty desk, Garcia linked arms with her, and Rossi began giving advice on the best places to get food in New York at three in the morning.

"We're going out for drinks!" someone called, and before she could protest, the team whisked her to the elevator and out of the building. It came as a surprise when she realized how grateful she was to not walk out alone.

Emily Prentiss didn't look back as she left the BAU for the final time. Instead, she went confidently forward among the friends who had become family, and for this last afternoon, were her teammates. The very idea of the hugs and the probable tears that would fall at the end of the night still loomed in the back of her mind, but she would survive them.

This feeling, right now, was what she would truly miss the most.

After all, these people had made bigger impressions on her life than she had ever expected. Each had left his or her own disincentive mark, coloring the way Emily now viewed the world. Time together may be ending, but their influence would last the rest of her life. _Leaving without a real goodbye, without some kind of a tangible ending would feel wrong,_ she realized.

Maybe face-to-face goodbyes weren't so bad after all.

"_The __song__ is __ended__, but the __melody lingers__ on..." _

_-Irving Berlin_


End file.
